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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026

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How about we just weight all the measures by historical incidence rate? I think we all naturally conceive of what kind of measure that produces. The argument about virtue is boring and disingenuous and mostly just bad people coping.

Historical incidence rate of what? A particular value set? A behavioral distribution? A comparative cross-sectional study of different civilizational values throughout history and their effectiveness and pros/cons would be interesting but one would need to account for local selection pressures. Warlike values are very adaptive in violent, tribal, resource-scarce environments but not very useful in post scarcity western society where cooperation, norm-following, and restraint are likely more adaptive.

Virtue arguments are always boring because they are unfalsifiable and unrealistic. But i would disagree that it's just bad people coping. Needing to view people with a different value set from you as "bad" is already Untermensch behavior indicative of being a slave to basic primitive tribal impulses. Any real "highest type" would already be able to not be chained to those primordial impulses.

one would need to account for local selection pressures

No, that's what made good people/humanity. You do not need to „account“ for it.

Sounds like you reject warlike values. That is, manliness, courage, honour, bravery, leadership, assertiveness. See, you do know what I mean when I say virtue, you just want to reject virtue. But everybody knows that weakness, deceit, cowardice, long housedness, and going with the rabble are lowly characteristics. That's the problem, that people with those inferior traits get money at all. It's not because being warlike isn't adaptive for men, it's because man is beset by non-conscious entities which eat at his soul and rob him. Yes, capitalism likes the low, because capitalism is a demon and wants slaves in the form of degraded men. Worshiping that demon leads to race degeneration and we're seeing it. It's very real and powerful but it ought to be fought instead of given into with a shrug and a „what is good, anyway? Maybe the demon called Modernity favors herbivore-men ... who am I to judge?“

warlike values. That is, manliness, courage, honour, bravery, leadership, assertiveness

Also violence, cruelty, might makes right, honor feuds, glory seeking, ruthlessness, predatory opportunism, clannishness. Warlike values are not restricted to "virtues" that you like. We just had the whole Nowak vs Digwa discussion. Digwa is acting with virtue in a warlike tribal society. Do you like those virtues in the practical application?

No, that's what made good people/humanity. You do not need to „account“ for it.

This is nonsensical, local selection pressure make people good for surviving those local selection pressures. It is not a universal minimum in the gradient space of values. You'll have to give actual evidence than Tengri Mongolian values and behaviors should convey actual virtue in Christian Renaissance Italian society or Imperial Chinese society. I cannot convey how quarter-wit I find this weird objection. Your argument is that we should take known heavily biased data, do no normalization, no attempt to account for outside factors, and use it to build models and they will just generalize for any situation. It's statistically and mathematically illiterate.

you do know

I do not, but I am learning you lack imagination, introspection, and/or the ability to see the whole system. You cherry picked a bunch of warlike values that you think are virtuous, conveniently did not include any that you don't view as virtuous and then attempted to put them as words in my mouth. You left out virtues that real societies have considered virtuous but that you do not. Proving my point that virtues are culturally defined. You derive from a western-christian cultural milieu, you have a biased set of virtues. You could have the epistemological humility to understand that, but clearly don't.

Yes, capitalism likes the low, because capitalism is a demon and wants slaves in the form of degraded men

This is a wildly crazy sentence. Capitalism does not want anything, it is not sentient. In so much, if you believe the idea that Capitalism is egregore, then it wants to perpetuate its own existence, and derive profit. Profit is a-moral, multi-agentic, and a stable signal. It is up to a society to use Capitalism and Profit as a tool of how they see fit. One does not blame the hammer for how it used.

Modernity favors

Modernity favors cooperation, rule/norm-following, individualism, but also self-promotion, narcissism, materialism, strategic coldness, status management, narrative control, and the ability to dominate without looking like a brute.

It's pretty opposed to the old martial values because it is not the society of warriors, it is a society of merchants and priests. The selection pressure are different. If you want to make the argument that we should return to being a society of warriors, that is a better argument, but you should actually make it.

You are treating "warrior values" as though they are eternal truths rather than the self-justifying morality of a particular ruling caste.

Digwa is acting with virtue in a warlike tribal society. Do you like those virtues in the practical application?

The boomer? Yes, he acted fine. The guy on crutches was annoying and entitled and I don't want to pay taxes to defend him.

Modernity favors cooperation, rule/norm-following, individualism, but also self-promotion, narcissism, materialism, strategic coldness, status management, narrative control, and the ability to dominate without looking like a brute.

Modernity favors blacks, Muslims, the low IQ, and people with ADHD. That's what the fertility trends show. Capitalism rewards your type of person with money, but they are so unfit and contrary to nature that they fail to even reproduce with it. But they spend on it interfering with high quality peoples' reproduction.

You are treating "warrior values" as though they are eternal truths rather than the self-justifying morality of a particular ruling caste.

You said I am stupid and cannot see the whole system, but then you pull out this ready-made-for-you concept of „caste.” Higher men are fine at being warriors but they are not just of a „particular caste”. They can also be good merchants and priests and these things are not even necessarily separate professions. You are using limiting concepts that don't seem warranted.

Capitalism does not want anything, it is not sentient.

Want is used in that, it behaves as to achieve the thing which it „wants.” That does not mean it has qualia; the whole issue is it's a powerful pattern, like a storm, but it has no qualia, also like a storm. And like a bad storm it can wipe out humans, and it's worse than any storm in recorded history, it has severely damaged our gene pool.

It is up to a society to use Capitalism and Profit as a tool of how they see fit.

Capitalism is that which has enabled the lowly to have power over the high. It's like the devil and the lowly have a deal with it. So capitalism reproduces lowly people in exchange for the destruction of the high. It's a util black hole, it kills off beautiful qualia havers and leaves the dreadful while capitalism itself only consume utils and doesn't actually have them.